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AAE 2014 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
READING GROUPS
Architecture of Multiple Authorship
Sandra Denicke-Polcher and Torange Khonsari
The Cass. School of Architecture, London Metropolitan University
Introduction
3- Students with an undergraduate skill set take a very
long time building habitable structures.
The Live Projects described here run under the research
title of “Architecture of Multiple Authorship” and are
initiated by students and tutors with local community
groups and residents. They challenge the way
architecture projects with a social agenda are
conventionally conceived.
4- Lead times for funding applications, requires one year
of research and development before submission of an
application.
These types of projects aim at public projects that go
beyond the hardware of a building, designing its
sociability, its partnerships and its economic model, that
sustains it. This method of running Live Projects is to
find ways for architects to make successful social
projects.
Within the current discussion of shortening the
architectural education in the UK and the new EU
1
Directive , our Live Projects studio proposes an
educational model, which adds practical experience to
the academic education whilst shortening the time at
university and being more competitive within the EU.
The studio suggests running projects over several
academic years involving different student cohorts, each
participating during different phases of a project,
ultimately enabling an on-going live engagement with a
place and community on a project. This model could
become a UK wide one to replace the current year-out
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practical experience (recommended by the ARB ) while
at the university, or a future “supervised professional
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traineeship” .
To address this limitation, the model described here
proposes a structure for teaching Live Projects as part of
a re-evaluated architectural education in the UK, from
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the current 3+2+2 years to a EU competitive 5+0 years .
This model reflects the changing needs of the profession
and responds to the recent rise in tuition fees: The time
and cost reduced “5+0” would mean that the practical
year out experience is no longer required in order to
qualify as an architect in the UK. While believing in a
good balance between theory and practice, this model
common to several EU countries has obvious
disadvantages for a holistic architectural education. In
contrast, the new protoprofessional framework
proposed here, would also address the often tight job
market, which can interfere with students’ ability to find
productive internships and make good use of the
practical year-out.
The Live Projects, which are described in more detail
below do not have a singular commissioner but their
client body is made up of a network of partnerships
between local community members, local stakeholders,
our students and the tutors. They do not necessarily
result in construction of a building, but have smaller
temporary or permanent physical structures with strong
social outcomes. Due to limited funds being available,
students are required to rely on local expertise and
involvement in kind as well as using discarded objects
and materials for construction.
Over the last few years the Live Project Studio continued
projects beyond the academic year, which is the basis
for the proposed model. This enabled our presence at
one location over several years with a precise set of
communities, partners and collaborators, enabling much
more meaningful and successful social projects with
different student cohorts. We propose that each cohort
develops an aspect of the Live Project, ranging from
fundraising and community outreach to developing
educational, social or cultural programs to constructing
small structures to host the programs. The students are
taught about good practices in socially engaged Live
Projects. Every year the participating student cohort
learns a different skill driven by the city and its
environment, however, always in relation to previous
cohorts’ activities whose work they take over to develop
while it evolves.
Since 2000, our ongoing research on Live Projects within
the academic context has shown that one academic year
is not enough to develop a meaningful project with
social, economic and physical implications, embedded in
concrete reality of a place. The reasons why one
academic year is insufficient is:
1- Delivering teaching skills to undergraduate students
at the same time as delivering a Live Project would
require more than one academic year.
2- Obtaining community trust and commitment requires
long-term engagement.
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AAE 2014 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
READING GROUPS
Not only students benefit from the continuous
involvement in a specific place. This way of working
establishes links, knowledge and a presence required for
making radical yet holistic changes within the city and,
more precisely, its neighborhoods. Students are taught
collaboration, non-hierarchical positioning of the
architect as expert and potentials of multidisciplinary
practice. They are equipped with insights into
developing localised social, projects with minimal
physical applications at low cost. This way of working
makes students not only ‘fit’ for practice, but also gives
them the confidence to develop new and individual
initiatives within the city for its citizens.
physical, social, cultural, educational and political. It is
the complex network and its relationships, that these
Live Projects create, that constructs the life of the
architectural project.
The clients are community groups, often in deprived
areas, and projects are of public nature. All Live Projects
within this studio are defined by a continuous
relationship between the students and shifting
members of a community group, traditionally called the
“client”.
On the one hand we agree with Prue Chiles’s definition
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of Live Projects , as being adaptable in terms of scale,
ambitions, agendas and leadership and allowing them to
mutate and be continued by empowered communities.
However, we feel it unnecessarily limits the social
outcome by restricting it to the first 6 weeks of each
academic year. We prefer to define Live Projects much
less by time. In the past our programs ran for the whole
of the academic year and often involved students
beyond the academic year and into their gap year. The
continuous relationships and engagement with the
places we are involved in and the communities we touch
is extremely important. This means social interactions
and relationships do not become “token”.
Live Projects teaching as academic practice
The methodology of our teaching of socially engaged
architecture in the design studio is opposed to the
current trends of a purely paper architecture education,
where students look at social and political conditions in
cities from a distance and take a speculative angle
without concrete engagement with real situations.
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At the recent ASN conference Lines Drawn students
stressed the “importance of practices playing a role in
their academic and professional training” and of “live
projects … seen as a positive step in engaging with the
real world.”
Super-local
At the heart of our agenda is a holistic approach. As part
of this, students build 1:1 prototypes and structures
using locally sourced materials, which are often
collected from the local community. The negotiations,
relationships and social networks created through
obtaining these materials start to set up a community
informed and interested in the projects.
Each year 15-20 students, who opt for our Live Projects
studio, explore how theory plays a role in innovation of
practice and development of current culture in
architecture. They seek new ways of practicing
architecture and are asked to rethink the traditional role
of the architect as a service provider and learn how to
work in unconventional ways, initiating projects and redefining practice.
The method of re-using materials changes the way we
design as architects and contributes to an unexpected
aesthetic. The discarded objects are collected and
documented by the students, thus illustrating the social
and spatial relationships of each physical component
that creates the larger built structures.
The studio’s projects being the result of local
partnerships as well as self initiated funding are
presented as a “gift” to local citizens. Projects have the
benefit that they can be experimental and open-ended.
As there are limited funds and no singular
commissioner, students have a greater influence on the
project and its development.
Within these structures we act by hosting events. The
varied events bring out different interests within the
community, which later lead to architectural
programmes for the spaces created. These programmes,
which derive from local interests, become very specific
to a locality. They have communities attached to them
who, if constituted well, can sustain themselves.
Following this position, it is important that the students
learn to become stakeholders in these projects, e.g. they
remain on boards of trustees or steering committees or
continue the projects into their future practice. This
moves away from a traditional role of the architect as a
service provider - “Agent operating for” - towards an
architect who becomes collaborator and partner 6
“Agent operating with” - towards the production of an
“Architecture of Multiple Authorship”.
Beyond the Academic Year
As deadlines of Live Projects with real collaborators and
partners are not defined by academic hand-in dates but
by real external pressures, projects which are live in
nature are usually not finished within a single academic
year and need to extend further.
Community Live Projects
The outcomes are engrained within relational spatial
practice, where the spatiality can range from being
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AAE 2014 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
READING GROUPS
finished. The move of the Mobile Room to a community
garden, where it has been used as a community room,
happened thereafter and could not be continued as an
academic project as it did not comply with the academic
requirements of purely running a community program.
This did not have detrimental effect on the success of
the space but the students missed the opportunity to
participate in the empowerment of the community and
further physical adjustments required to make the space
work better.
As a consequence and in order to maintain the open
nature of such projects, we have often been able to
offer students the opportunity to continue working on
projects in their next academic year or beyond. The
freedom from the academic calendar permits ongoing
engagement with a place and expanded scope for the
social project.
The structure we present here is one, which sits
between academic context, practice and the city. To
promote this type of teaching method we suggest
setting up a “Live Projects Agency” within the academic
institution, where the agency acts with rather than for
clients. The sites we are interested in are public and
communal in occupation and primarily under public or
communal ownership.
Experimentation in live project teaching
We argue for architects who can become trusted
partners through ongoing and open-ended engagement
with a community as opposed to an architect who is a
service provider with limited time resource and hope
this method, once fully tested, can influence the
architects scope of appointment.
Fig. 2. The Nomadic Pub in Liverpool
Students have the potential to become partners and
collaborators. This opens up new possibilities of
responding to ongoing changes in a community, which
are usually not possible in a conventional client and
architect relationship.
The Nomadic Pub in Liverpool (fig. 2) started as a
student competition in 2010. All students developed
their individual proposals further within that academic
year, but the project gave one student the opportunity
nd
rd
to take it from 2 into 3 year and to work closely with
the local community, a construction firm and funding
bodies. At the time, the academic structure didn’t equip
the student to learn methods of project initiation, such
as negotiating with stakeholders, the political language
required to convince local authorities and fundraising
skills to allow the project to continue beyond the
academic year.
We want to describe five different projects in the
following to end up describing one project of the
proposed study model:
Two projects, the Archive Wall in Liverpool and Stalls
for Mallon Gardens in Aldgate, London were successful
projects. Students built up trust with local communities
over several weeks and offered “gifts” - a family of built
structures, which facilitated local events and festivals for
the local areas in Everton, Liverpool and Aldgate,
London.
Fig. 1. Mobile Room for London
The Mobile Room for London (fig. 1) gave students the
opportunity to explore hands on construction of a low
cost Live/Work unit. Made entirely from re-used
materials found in the local neighborhood, this taught
the students how to make projects with a small budget.
The room was constructed in 2008-09, but the students
were not able to inhabit and test the structure fully, as
the academic year had ended when the structure was
Fig. 3. Community Stage in Kronberg, Germany
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AAE 2014 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
READING GROUPS
Both, during the first academic year with the Mobile Hut
and the second academic year at the Austin Estate,
students organized a series of events and actions (fig 5),
which gave rise to the creation of different clubs on the
estate, such as a sewing club, board game club and a
cooking club. Clubs are effective settings for resident
gathering, debate about public life and their needs. The
clubs were handed over to residents and some became
constituted. Students proposed fragments of joint
overall schemes, developing what we call an
“Architecture of Multiple Authorship” and discussing the
architect’s continuing responsibility of their projects in
the public realm. This project will continue in order to
support the development of the clubs and aims to
develop the public realm strategy for the Austin Estate.
The project for a Community Stage in Kronberg,
Germany (fig. 3) started in 2008 without student
involvement through an onsite engagement phase,
called “Ideen-Werkstatt”, defining the community,
establishing a common aim for an outdoor stage and
securing funding for construction - all required to
prepare the student project. In 2009-2010 students
were involved in the design and competition phases and
learnt how to act as community collaborators. After the
academic year, only the student whose final design was
chosen was sporadically involved. The experience
included detailing and construction as well as amending
local planning laws and developing a sustainable cultural
programme of events to be run by the community.
We feel strongly that for projects to be successful and
holistic in a social and cultural sense, architects and
students need to remain community collaborators over
a long period of time, free from the academic calendar.
As shown with the above projects, we often experienced
social and time limitations with our projects. This is why
we have developed this model, allowing academic
projects to run over longer periods.
Student experience
Fig. 4. Mobile Hut 2013, Hayes
With the methods used, the studio teaches students
“duty of care” and the values of collaboration, a sense of
non-hierarchical positioning of the architect. Student
feedback has demonstrated that students leaving the
studio are equipped with a skill-set to develop self
initiated projects. They value team-work which allows
them to not solely be dependent on seeking
employment but to explore and establish their own
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practices.
In the last 2 academic years (2012-14) Studio 3 has been
working on the deprived Austin Estate in Hayes, West
London, in order to re-imagine its civic life and exploring
the notion of a ‘Town Hall’ for an ethnically diverse and
fragmented residential community. Starting in the first
year with the construction of a Mobile Hut we explored
social enterprise potentials opposite the Austin Estate.
(fig 4). These enterprises included paper works, soap
and candle products etc. The students saw, contrary to
local perception, that the Austin Estate has interested
and active residents. This gave the idea of exploring the
traditional typology of a town hall against the
contemporary context of the ethnically and culturally
diverse Housing Estate. We were not interested in civic
service but civic action.
A System for the Future
The new model proposed here could replace the current
two years of practical year-out experience with students
spending one year in the “Live Projects Agency”, which
would give students a theoretical and practical
education at the same time. This would enable the
current practical experience to become a university
based one, at the same time shortening the
architectural education to the “5+0”.
The so called “Live Projects Agency”, if created at the
CASS, would work closely with the university based RIBA
Chartered Practice CASS projects, founded in 2004. This
provides the ARB credited supervision and the
professional environment to the students whilst
enabling it to flourish within a critical academic context.
As the project re-imagine the Town Hall in Hayes shows,
our teaching has now entered methods of extending
projects over several years and involve consecutive
student cohorts. This way, projects can contribute to
community improvement by being agile in responding to
Fig. 5. Re-imagining the Town Hall 2014, Hayes
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AAE 2014 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
READING GROUPS
changes within the community they are working in. This
is only possible as the subsequent phases of a project
are conceptualised and realised over several years.
fun. I learned that the skill set of an architect can be (and has to
be) very broad and open. I realised how much an architect has
to vary the ways of communication while trying to work with
different groups (…) and how much one has to adapt. 2. It
made me happier! It’s somehow reassuring to know that I’ll be
able to use all the skills I already have, from knowing Arabic to
being able to climb fences! The studio also gave me the tools
and courage to start my own practice. It was important to see
that very interesting projects can be self-initiated and if
successful, the funding will follow. There’s no need to force
myself to design skyscrapers on a conveyer belt. 3. I’m
interested in being an open-minded architect with broad skills
working in a small practice. I’d like to continue combining
research, live events and design. Halil, 3rd year student: 1.
...My time in Studio 3 taught me to look at architecture from a
completely different perspective. Prior to joining the studio, I
was reconsidering my choice of career and contemplating
possibly moving to another area of design, due to the fact that I
felt that architecture was not a field I would easily fit into, …
however my time in Studio 3 taught me to integrate my
strengths and interests into my work, through exploring
alternative forms of architecture and design. 2. ...Learning
about alternative forms of architecture and the non-traditional
infrastructures that support such projects (i.e. community
initiated projects in lieu of single-client initiated and funded),
has broadened my field of view of what makes up the
profession… I am now more confident in my current strengths
and know that I can play to them in my future career. 3. … I
would like to position myself as an individual who aims to work
as part of a team. Studio 3 has been very team oriented… With
each member possessing their own set of skills and knowledge,
the design process becomes more effective and more efficient.
Our constant work with communities is proof that wider scale
input in a project leads to a richer, more successful project in
the long term, and I would like to continue this ethos into my
own career as an architect. Michael, 3rd year student: 1. I have
chosen Studio 3 because it promised to investigate what it
means to be an architect today. …it only reassured me that a
successful architect is someone who’s socially engaged and
aware of the current issues. 2. It made me believe that there is
a need for socially aware designers that wouldn't shy away
from engaging with real people at the very early stages of the
design process and be open to all the challenges that this could
bring. … 3. …to me the human aspect, the real problems of real
people, is always the most fascinating and the most rewarding.
As an architect I would like to have a positive impact on other
people and their lives and help them live in a better and fuller
way by implementing clever design solutions... In one sentence
- I would like to contribute to the society by producing
meaningful work that is beneficial to others.
A model attractive to EU students
In the context of rising student fees, declining job
opportunities during students’ year-out and a
greater competition amongst EU architects, we are
therefore advocating for a shorter education in the UK,
possibly without ARB Parts 1 and 2, and without the
year-out experience in practice, but with a school-based
year-out “externship” in the Live Projects Agency.
We would anticipate this model to also be very
attractive to students from other EU countries, where
the education to become a registered architect consists
mostly of theory based teaching at universities without
any practical experience being required. Our method, in
contrast, would give students a theory and practice
related architectural education that will contribute to
and may provide an alternative career path, which is not
the singular, prescribed mainstream profession of the
architect.
1
Hodder, Stephen. RIBA Council 2013: “According to the new
Directive architectural training should now comprise either five
years of university level training (‘5+0’) or not less than four
years of study supplemented by a supervised professional
traineeship of a minimum of two years (‘4+2’).”
2
Practical Training Requirements of the ARB: Typically, 12
months of the ARB’s practical training requirements are taken
between 3rd and 4th year.
3
see Note 1
4
3+2+2 years: 3 years full-time studies to achieve ARB Part 1, 2
years full-time to achieve ARB Part 2, 2 years in practice
(usually 12 months between ARB Part 1 and Part 2 and 1 year
after ARB Part 2). 5+0 years: 5 years at university without the
experience in practice.
5
Lines Drawn Press Release 25.03.2014. “ASN calls for changestudents discuss the state of UK architectural education”.
6
Petrescu, Doina. “Relationscapes: Mapping agencies of
relational practice in architecture” in City, Culture and Society,
volume 3, issue 2, 2012, p. 135-140.
7
Chiles, Prue. “A Live (Project) big & small conversation, Live
Projects and Alternative Ways of Practice” in IYO, Issue 1,
November 2006, p.30.
8
Examples from student questionnaire conducted by Studio 3
in 2014. Questions: 1. How did the year with Studio 3 meet or
change your perception of the profession of the architect? 2.
What did the year with Studio 3 contribute to your current
expectations of your professional career? 3. How would you
want to position yourself as a future architect? Answers: Eeva,
2nd year student: 1. My perception of the profession of an
architect changed quite drastically. It expanded from thinking
that I’d have to adapt to a ready-made formula (a slightly
boring Western male wearing black) to something a bit more
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